Today, there are a number of different approaches to search among and present information associated with geographical position data.
A geographic position can be described in many different ways, e.g. address, name of business, phone number or name of a person. After the position has been identified on the map it can be used for different purposes, e.g. present it on a map, use it as origin, or destination.
The solutions known from prior art all have the approach that the user first decides what to search for and then the system searches in a particular database.
It is sometimes hard to know what databases that will get the matches, using the current approach.
An example of such a system is presented in US-2006/0235816, which describes a method for searching in databases, where known information about a user position is used to locally adapt a search.
Another example of a system for searching and presenting geographical position data is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,523,028, which describes a method for step by step refining a database search through the system to propose suitable search words and databases to search in, in order to let the user on basis of the search result further refine the search.
A further example of a system for searching and presenting geographical position data is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,082,365, which describes a plurality of methods for searching various points of interest within a given search zone, such as radial search, boxed boundary search, or a zip code or city search, based on position information from a navigational device. The method incorporates a categorical rating metrics search engine for providing the searcher with an indexed response of the highest rated points of interest within the spatial search zone based on the user's search criteria.
A further example of a system for searching and presenting information associated with geographical position data is disclosed in US 2006/253247 A1.
However, although there are a number of solutions for searching among and presenting geographical position data there is no prior art dealing with the problem of having information in a plurality of databases.